North Korean parents who let kids watch foreign films sent to prison

North Korea warns parents who let their children watch Hollywood blockbusters that they will be sent to prison camps amid crackdown on Western film and TV shows

• Pyongyang is intensifying efforts to remove foreign films and TV programmes
• Parents who brake the rules now face prison, not the past stern warning 

Parents in North Korea who allow their children to watch Hollywood blockbusters have been warned that that will be sent to prison camps amid the country’s Western media crackdown, officials have said.

Although in the past, parents could get away with a serious warning if their chidden were caught in possession of media from overseas.

Pyongyang has now escalated its endeavour to get rid of all foreign media from the East Asian country by telling parents they will face severe punishment if their children are found watching illicit overseas films.

Inminban, the neighbourhood watch meetings, are being put in place to notify parents that no tolerance will be shown to those who allow their children to be exposed to Western content, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

The parent of a child caught viewing foreign films or television programmes will be sent to a labour camp for six months, however, their children will have to serve five years.

The country’s dictator Kim Jong-un has tightened restrictions on imported popular culture out of fear that younger generations will become exposed to external influences

The Telegraph reported that those found talking, dancing or singing ‘like a South Korean’ will also serve six months, with their parents serving a similar term.

Quoting sources inside the country, reports claimed parents are being directed to educate their children ‘properly’ in the state’s socialist ideals. 

Foreign media, particularly anything deemed to be ‘Western’, is strictly prohibited in North Korea – which brainwashes its population to support the ruling regime.

The eradication of imported media and popular culture is believed to have been founded upon fears that younger generations within North Korea will become influenced when exposed to external sources.

Kim Jong-un views South Korea as an American puppet state and is sensitive to any of its media crossing the border. 

The RFA were told by the source: ‘The host of the meeting emphasises parental responsibility, saying that education for children begins at home. 

‘If parents do not educate their children from moment to moment, they will dance and sing of capitalism and become anti-socialists.’ 

A sentence to death can be expected for anyone convicted of distributing smuggled videos.  

Parents who allow their children to watch Hollywood films in North Korea will be sent to prison camps

Last year in October, two teenage boys, thought to be aged between 16 and 17, were shot on an airfield in front of terrified locals in the city of Hyesan for watching and selling movies from neighbouring South Korea.

A third boy of the same age was executed alongside them for murdering his stepmother, with locals told the crimes were ‘equally evil.’

Images have also been released of a group of children and parents seated before a large crowd as their sentences are read out for breaking the Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act by watching foreign films.

News of the clampdown came as state media said that North Korea test-fired four long-range Hwasal-2 missiles. 

The move was to hone its rapid-response capabilities towards ‘hostile forces’, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

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